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Biodiversity wipeout facing South East Asia

More than 40 per cent of the animal and plant species in South East Asia could be wiped out this century, with at least half representing global extinctions.

This dire prediction results from the first systematic study of species disappearance in Singapore, considered a “worst case scenario” for what could happen in the rest of the region.

“These predictions are grim – and they probably will unfold,” says Barry Brook of the Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia, who conducted the new research with colleagues at the Raffles Museum in Singapore. “Any effective conservation would need a strong effort from governments to preserve large continuous areas of habitat, but, being a realist, I can’t see that this will take place.”

The maroon woodpecker is already extinct in Singapore

(Image: Barry Brook/Raffles Museum)

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Unprecedented and expanding programmes of deforestation in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and neighbouring countries mean the future of the region is likely to be small islands of forest surrounded by a sea of agriculture and human occupied lands, says Brook.

Lee Tan, co-ordinator of the Asia-Pacific Unit of the Australian Conservation Foundation, agrees that large-scale attempts to protect biodiversity are unlikely&colon; “There is a very strong push for urbanisation in South East Asia, and as a result there are very limited resources for conservation and environmental protection.”

In microcosm

Singapore represents a well-studied microcosm for events unfolding throughout South East Asia, Brook thinks. Since 1819, land-clearing has destroyed more than 95 per cent of the original vegetation cover.

The forests that remain today are protected. But more than three quarters of Singapore’s species are considered “threatened”, according to World Conservation Union criteria. Some, such as the cream-coloured giant squirrel and the white-bellied woodpecker, have populations so small that they are almost guaranteed to go extinct.

The team’s study of more than 30 published species checklists shows that Singapore has lost at least 28 per cent of its biodiversity in the past 183 years. Butterflies, fish, birds and mammals have been particularly affected.

But, based on surveys of species found in neighbouring Malaysia, they think habitat loss in Singapore could have wiped out many species before they were ever documented, and the true extinction figure could be as high as 73 per cent.

Mammals to crustaceans

Tropical forests are home to a greater biodiversity than anywhere else on the surface of the Earth. Extrapolating to the rest of South East Asia, where deforestation is predicted to reach 74 per cent by 2100, Brook thinks there will be an accompanying disappearance of between 13 and 42 per cent of plant and animal species in the region.

Some, such as butterflies, will vanish much more quickly than other, longer-lived species, such as trees that escape logging.

Thomas Brooks, at the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science in Washington DC, says the study is important because of the wide range of species considered, from mammals to crustaceans.

But he is more hopeful that something can be done&colon; “Fortunately, the time-lag between habitat loss and species loss does give South-East Asia a window of opportunity to mobilise biodiversity conservation on the scale necessary to stem these extinctions.”